An unapologetic marching band against the forces of darkness!

Sam or Spam? (With Charts and Everything)

My BFF, Samuel Benoit, is a hilarious person. He can play the straight man or the goofball, he can pull off both slapstick and stand-up, he is versatile and yet uniquely esoteric, and he has sharp eyes and a sharp wit.

Case in point: he gave a speech at my wedding in which he (a) began with a fake history lesson about the city we were in (it’s a running joke between us that he hates every city I’ve ever lived in, simply because it wasn’t the same city he lived in at the time), (b) claimed that he has been sworn to protect me from uninteresting people, such as my family and friends, (c) threatened them—many by name—in the name of claiming my valuable time, and (d) finally admitted that ‘since he couldn’t ward off Robin [my husband], he is now bound to protect him as well’. I was in stitches, as was everyone at my wedding (and I desperately hope that there is video footage of this speech somewhere in the possession of at least one of our guests).

What’s more, Samuel writes a great blog. He’s an excellent photographer and a decent videographer, and his writing style is charming and thought-provoking.

Yet his Internet presence is somewhat lacking. In particular, his Twitter feed leaves something—nay, very much—to be desired. That is why Stephanie and I have begun this campaign. Read on, and help us help Samuel be as funny on his social networks as he is in “real” life.

First, consider this pie chart.

As you can see, the vast majority of Samuel’s Twitter content is automatically generated. Note that the sample size is fairly small; Samuel has only tweeted 42 times—and yet he apparently follows more than 150 other Twitter users. That, in addition to the fact that he hasn’t written a bio for his profile, sure says “bot” to me. Observe:

This post is dedicated to those 46 other people who also want Samuel’s Twitter feed to be full of quips and insights.

Here is some of my further research on the topic. Click (and zoom, if you wish) to see it in all its glorious detail.

He is evidently an interesting person and an active participant on many social networks. What we’re complaining about is the Twitter. Thus, we offer a few thoughts:

How To Be Better at Twitter

Twitter for Creativity

Kate Beaton, girl-genius behind the Hark! A Vagrant web comic, tweets as @beatonna. Stephanie and I mined her Twitter feed recently because we wanted to share, for Samuel and for everyone, an example of using Twitter for creative and humourous ends. Plus, the world should know about King Baby. It began as a funny observation, became a drawing, then spawned reactions from many Twitter users, and thus established itself as a meme (however minor). Observe:

We know that you, Samuel Benoit, are capable of meme creation of such proportions, and we want to take part. You hardly even have to do anything. Just say a funny thing once in a while. That’s it. That’s all I want. (And then you poke me back…)

Twitter for Learning

Stephanie saved a few favourite tweets from a conversation about libraries to illustrate that tweets can serve as useful exchanges of information. For the sake of our point, please forgive the colourful language.

And here’s an example of how The Economist uses Twitter to provoke discussion and learning.

Personally, I’d like Sam to spend less time on Twitter and to spend more time as my life coach. This would be a symbiotic relationship of course: I would learn how to socialize and make friends, while Sam would benefit from my amazing cooking.

[…] everyone on the Internet has probably already heard, my BFF Chloe Filson recently accused me of being awful at Twitter on her popular egg-pun website Real Life Artist. As you can see by the below chart, she has […]